'It was carnage on a scale the frozen ice floes of Newfoundland have not seen
for more than half a century," the story in The Guardian began. "The cull
started early in the morning, with more than 70 boats disgorging hundreds of
seal hunters on to the ice. By the end of the day more than 15,000 harp seal
cubs, most less than six weeks old, lay dead, clubbed to death and skinned to
provide coats, hats, handbags and other accessories for the European fashion
trade."

In the past couple of weeks, variations of this story have appeared around the
world. Sometimes there's a colour photo of a cute and helpless-looking animal on
a patch of bloodstained ice. In one paper the caption reads: "A seal pup
yesterday surveys the remains of its slaughtered playmates."

Canada's seal hunt (or harvest, as the federal government prefers to call it) is
winding up for the year, amid the usual skirmishing between protesters and
sealers. But the bad publicity has only just begun. The gory images of death on
the ice serve as a major fundraiser for animal-rights groups. The U.S. Humane
Society, which prominently features pup-clubbing on its website, has called for
a worldwide boycott of Canadian fish products to protest the hunt. The story
made Time magazine.

No matter how you feel about the hunt (and I'd bet that a large majority of
mainland Canadians oppose it), it is a terrible black eye for Canada. No matter
how many "fact sheets" the federal government sends out, or how many letters to
the editor our ambassadors and high commissioners write, we can't erase the
bloody images beamed around the world. People may know next to nothing about
Canada. But they do know we kill defenceless baby animals so that a bunch of
rich women can wear seal-fur coats.

And what does Canada get in return for this reputational slaughter? Well, last
year the seal fishery brought in a grand total of $16-million. It accounts for
just 2.5 per cent of total revenues from the fishery.

The seal harvest went into decline after the United States and many European
nations began banning seal-pelt imports. Then, in the mid-90s, the federal
government raised the quota so that hard-up fishermen in Newfoundland could earn
some extra money after the cod stocks crashed. Today, the main markets for pelts
are Norway, Denmark and China. Phony science abounds on both sides of the
debate. The animal-rights crowd argues that the cull threatens the seal
population (which is at record highs), while the government argues that the
seals are bad because they eat the cod (which really disappeared because of
overfishing).

But the real reason Ottawa defends the seal hunt isn't economics. It's politics.
Newfoundlanders regard the right to hunt seals as a sacrosanct and inviolable
part of their traditional identity (even though only three or four thousand of
them actually do it). Their politicians invariably vow to defend this right to
the death against meddling, ignorant foreigners (including anyone from mainland
Canada). Newfoundland has seven seats in Parliament. This is why we'll probably
be cursed with the seal hunt forever.

The trouble with the animal-welfare propaganda is that most of it is true. The
hunters wade into vast seal nurseries on the ice, when the pups are barely
weaned from their mothers. Sometimes they use rifles, and sometimes hakapiks,
which are spiked clubs used to smash the pups' skulls. Then they skin the
animals for their pelts and fat. They leave the carcasses on the ice to rot,
because there's very little market for the meat. The ice runs with blood. This
year, the quota is 320,000.

If seals looked like rats, people might feel differently about them. If people
saw how calves are slaughtered, they'd probably be revolted by that, too. But
people are only human. Most people don't eat seal meat or wear their fur. And if
your morning paper ever chose to publish bloody-coloured pictures from the hunt,
you, too, would probably be writing a big cheque to the humane society.

Do we hypocritically care more for seals than people? After all, as one sealer
says, "I need to provide for my family and I have as much of a right to do that
as someone working in a factory does." To which I'd reply: I know your grandpa
did it, but the world has changed, and maybe you should set your sights a little
higher.

If you ask me, the government should just hand those sealers the $16-million and
send them all to night school to get retraining. In the end, they'll be way
better off. And so will we.

by Patti Davis
Newsweek
Updated: 4:24 p.m. ET April 6, 2005April 6 - While we mourn the pope's passing,
and celebrate the life he lived, our attention is naturally turned inward to our
hearts. We ruminate on compassion, on making the world a kinder place. It seems
to me that in this time more than any other, we have room in our hearts to
consider a terrible cruelty occurring on the ice floes of Canada.

The last days of March meant the last gruesome moments for tens of thousands of
baby harp seals. If you traveled to the ice floes of Newfoundland right now, and
for the coming weeks, you would be wading through a river of blood. You would
see small harp seal cubs, two weeks old, clubbed to death-or sometimes not to
death. Animal-rights activists-who seem to be fighting a losing battle-report
seeing babies crawling, struggling after being clubbed. One person reported
finding a baby, clubbed but not killed, who had managed to crawl away only to
die beneath the ice.

Seventy boats brought hundreds of seal hunters to these ice floes in the first
bloody days. And this year they are allowed to kill more than 320,000 seal pups,
the largest number in 50 years. By the end of the first day, the estimate of
dead seal pups was 15,000. Photographs show, and activists have reported, that
the ice flows are awash in blood, littered with bodies.

I am old enough to remember clearly the outrage in the '60s when photographs of
baby seals being clubbed to death were released in this country. The outrage did
some good; the trade in seal pelts went into decline. But since then the
Canadian government has continued to increase the quota of seal pups allowed to
be killed in this gruesome manner-1 million pups in three years, the biggest
quota since 1957.

Harp seal pups are fed for two weeks by their mothers before being sent out to
the ice alone to fend for themselves. They are unable to swim at that age and
are called "beaters" because they beat the water with their flippers to stay
afloat. They have no way to escape the men with clubs.

The reason for this increased slaughter is a new appetite, particularly in
Europe, for belts, handbags and coats made from seal pups. Norway is reportedly
a big market for these items.

How have we allowed this barbarism to increase? Are we so numb that we don't
care anymore about hundreds of thousands of innocent animals who did nothing but
be born? If most of us rounded a corner on a highway and saw a slaughter like
this, we would call the police, we would scream until our throats gave out, we
would probably charge the men with clubs. We wouldn't say, "I'd do something,
but there are so many other problems in the world ." The fact that it's taking
place in Canada doesn't remove our responsibility. We made a difference once.
Our horror, our outrage registered with the Canadian government.

Sadly, and poignantly, the Canadian government has counted on the world doing
nothing. And so far they're right.

Geoff Regan, the fisheries and oceans minister for the Canadian government, has
said he is ignoring the seal hunt protests and in fact hopes the hunt will
expand. In a London newspaper, he was quoted as accusing animal-rights groups of
using the images of the slaughter "to pull at people's heartstrings." Since he
apparently has no heart, it makes sense that he would find the images of small
white baby seals being clubbed to death perfectly acceptable.

There is some sign that the Canadian government is not entirely immune to
criticism. They put out a fact sheet for journalists defending the seal hunt.
With everything else that's going on in the world, we can find room in our
hearts for young animals-babies-who have no means of escape when men with clubs
stride across the ice to kill them so that their pelts can be made into purses
and belts.

Compassion always trumps greed. It is the ultimate and final power in the world.

Davis, the daughter of Nancy and Ronald Reagan, is a writer based in Los Angeles